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when the sun is warm, the sky is blue, the grass is green, and the garden is all new again!

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Friday, April 24, 2009

Around My Garden This Week

Around my garden, the blood root, Sanguinaria canadensis 'Multiplex', finally bloomed its best earlier this week.Already these blooms are gone. I did some reading on them and found out that the seeds of the blood root are spread around by ants, a process called myrmecochory.

If you can figure out how to pronounce myrmecochory, you can make it your new word for the day and impress all your friends. An example sentence might be "I'm as busy as an ant performing myrmechochry". Context would be if you were moving a lot of stuff around. Or something like that.

The crabapple, Malus 'Guinevere' has dark pink buds that open to white flowers.'Guinevere' never shows signs of disease, keeps her foliage a beautiful dark green all summer, and rarely produces any actual crabapples. I can and do recommend this variety to others.

Now, this is a tulip!I don't know the name of this double-flowering tulip, but it reminds me of peonies in bloom. It's planted near a Korean Spice Viburnum, V. carlesii, which I declare to be one of the most fragrant flowers of spring, other than lilacs of course. Remind me to plant many, many more double-flowering tulips this fall. In fact, I think I might actually order some now, and then forget about them until they show up on my doorstop this fall.

This weekend, I'm looking forward to seeing once again the blooms of the silverbell, Halesia carolina 'Arnold's Pink'. This morning, I'm going to stop by the Starbucks near where I work, the one that is going to close its doors for good today, and pick up a load of coffee grounds for my little silverbell to help acidify the soil around it. It likes acidic soil and the soil around here is not naturally acidic.

Then I plan to weed, mulch, finish the last of the garden clean up and begin planning for my Gardening Vacation, which starts in two weeks.

That's a little bit of what's going on around my garden this week and my plan for the weekend. What's yours?

20 comments:

I was just thinking that that tulip looked like a peony. Beautiful. I am going plant shopping with my Sister today. I am going to an auction of a nursery going out of business tomorrow with a friend. Busy busy watching the flowers grow.

Myrmechochry doesn't happen with the double flowering bloodroot, because it is infertile and produces no seed. However, it is the same method by which colchicum seeds are dispersed, and I believe trillium as well.

Funny I should read this today, having found a band of carpenter ants roaming my kitchen counter. A loose outlet cover was allowing them to venture into the house. I did not see them performing amazing acts of myrmechochry, however.

I've never had much luck with tulips but yours is gorgeous. I saw a bed of those 'peony' tulips at a botanical garden once and fell in love with them. Your double bloodroot is wonderful too. I'm used to only seeing to woodland single variety.

My Sanguinaria 'Multiplex' bloomed too! And it has a second bud. The bad news is that only 1 of the 5 or so plants will bloom this year. I help the ants by cutting off the seedpods just as they open and shaking them around where I'd like to have plants.

Loved learning about myrmecochory and like the idea of those little industrious ants contributing to the beauty of blood root. Saw some BR about to bloom while walking in the park a few days ago. Thanks for the new word.

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